Janet Daley was born in America where she began her political life on the Left as an undergraduate at Berkeley. She moved to Britain (and to the Right) in 1965 where she spent nearly twenty years in academic life before becoming a political commentator: all factors that inform her writing on British and American policy and politicians.

The truth about the Tories' private polls

Over at ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie notes the new polling arrangements at CCHQ: the Populus organisation run by Tory modernisers has lost its monopoly of internal polling. The party will now be using opinion-gathering information from YouGov as well.

Tim goes on to point out that some of the chief tenets of the Tory Modernisation doctrine which Populus embraced were contained in Lord Ashcroft's report "Smell the Coffee". One of these, which I have had reiterated to me with much fervour over the past few years, runs as follows: "We in the Tory party have to drop all those issues (immigration, Europe, etc) that were previously strongly associated with us because our traditional image is so hated by the voters."

The definitive proof of this particular hatred for the Tories was that when voters were presented with Conservative policies that were not identified with the party, they approved of them. But when told that these were "Conservative" policies, they rejected them. Hence, the existing Conservative "brand" was irretrievably damaged.

What the Ashcroft report did not mention was the truth imparted to me by an executive of a major polling organisation: the very same principle applied to Labour. When the public was offered what were in fact Labour policies but which were not idenitified as such, they approved of them. When told that these were official Labour policies, they said they disliked them. So where exactly does that leave us?

CCHQ may be in more need of fresh new polling advice than it would want to admit.